Archives at Zinester: YOWUSA.COM Announcements. YOWUSA.COM Announcements. Science & Technology

YOWUSA.COM Announcements Archives Index | Subscribe |

<< November30, 2003 - YOWUSA.COM Announcements

December14, 2003 - YOWUSA.COM Announcements >>

Subject: YOWUSA.COM Announcements - December07, 2003

Now on YOWUSA.COM

How Ashcroft Is Giving Al Qaeda the Green Light to Wage Internet Blackmail and E-mail Service Denial Attacks

YOWUSA.COM, December 7, 2003
Marshall Masters

YOWUSA.COM has uncovered a frightening weakness in the Internet mail system that Al Qaeda can exploit easily. It could be used to paralyze vital corporate communications, overseas correspondence between our servicemen and women and their families, and much more. In this article, you will learn why Attorney General John Ashcroft has likely chosen to ignore this weakness. He must. The leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties, who depend upon on pornography and spam-generated corporate donations to finance their political campaigns are responsible — and they’ve been responsible since the days of the Clinton administration. Then you’ll this weakness as it exists today — through the eyes of a would-be Al Qaeda cyber-terrorist.

In The News

USNews.com, 8 December 2003
A BLAST FROM HEAVEN? MAJOR IMPACT DISASTER 500 YEARS AGO?

In 1989, Edward Bryant climbed a point on the southeast coast of his native Australia with a colleague and found an odd jumble of boulders well above the surf. A big wave, he thought, maybe a tsunami from an earthquake, must have tossed them up there. Over the next few years, however, the University of Wollongong geologist explored hundreds of miles of coast and found more signs of wave action, hundreds of feet above the water--too high for any quake-spawned surge.

An astonishing hypothesis of devastation from outer space formed in his mind. It gathered some praise, along with many ferocious brickbats from doubting colleagues. But what may be a geologic smoking gun has now turned up in 1,000 feet of water just south of New Zealand. Columbia University geologist Dallas Abbott has found what appears to be an impact crater 13 miles across, implying that something enormous, maybe half a mile wide, smashed into the crust there.

If further research confirms that the circular depression is a recent crater, it would lend dramatic ammunition to Bryant's controversial scenario: Five hundred years ago or so, as Europe was beginning its colonial explorations, a comet or perhaps an asteroid plunged to Earth seaward of Australia's New South Wales coast. It would have sent mega-tsunamis ripping into nearby islands and Australia, where Bryant has found not just rocks but trees and beach sand hurled far up bluffs and cliffs, along with whirlpool-carved cavities as much as 150 feet across--testimony, he says, to the sea's onslaught. At one place, Jervis Bay, waves apparently urmounted a headland 420 feet high. "Only a bolide could do this," says Bryant, using a technical term for a sky-bursting cosmic missile. Geologists know such things can happen--a much bigger impact is believed to have ended the reign of the dinosaurs--but no such catastrophe is known in recorded history.

USA Today, 2 December 2003
SMALL NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS POSE MORE IMMINENT THREAT

Bad things can come in little packages, astronomers warn. So after a decade of searching for massive asteroids, they are turning to the threat posed by smaller, more common space rocks closer to Earth.

Most worries about impacts from space have centered on objects more than half a mile across. They are thought to smack into Earth every few million years, some with such force they trigger mass extinctions like the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

But a recently released NASA "Near-Earth Object Search" report scheduled for discussion at the American Geophysical Union meeting next week calls for better observation of smaller asteroids.

These rocks wouldn't trigger the global devastation of their larger brethren, but their impacts could still cause massive local damage, chiefly from tidal waves.

Brian College Eagle, 3 december 2003
LUNAR RESEARCH COLONIES SHOULD MONITOR NEAR EARTH OBJECTS

A former NASA chief historian said Tuesday that research colonies could be set up on the moon in about 30 years, and the facilities also would allow scientists to monitor asteroids and meteors that could devastate Earth.

Roger Launius, who now serves as a historian for the National Air and Space Museum, said the events portrayed in the movie "Armageddon" are not that far-fetched.

"Somewhere out there is an asteroid or a meteor with our name on it," said Launius, who was the featured speaker at the Texas A&M University Distinguished Lecture Series. "It does exist."

He said the best place to look into space for giant projectiles would be from the moon, which does not have the light or atmospheric conditions that hamper telescopes on Earth. Launius also said a day will come when nuclear weapons will be stored on the lunar surface to try and destroy any incoming projectiles big enough to destroy entire cities or even species.

Access
Premium
Content
Today!